Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Week 31

2013_02_25 Family Letter,Dear Family,It will be Christmas Day in 10 months, which just tells us how fastthings go. I am excited that it will be General Conference in just afew weeks. One thing is that I have been wondering about the problemof always being at a point that you are looking forward to things. Iguess that at this point that I have been looking forward to knowingnext week whether I will be transferred this next week or not, thoughin reality, as I talked to Elder Romero about this last night, all wehave to do is go out and do this week.We also have a Mission Conference with Elder Mazzagardi of the 70coming up on the 13th of March, which will be nice, even though itwill be some distance from here or my next area, depending on howthings go.The area of Concordia is doing well, though I admit that I have a hardtime or maybe I am not trying as hard as I could to be pushing mycompanion and myself on to new and better heights for numbers andlessons and investigators taught. We did not have any of ourinvestigators come to church this last week, which is a littlefrustrating because I don´t know what more to do with some of thepeople. My problem is that the people promise to come or say that theywill do something, but then simply don´t do it. Ie., they committhemselves but then don´t follow through with the commitment.Writing here is also very self-reflective and retro-reflective. Irealize once again in receiving President Fernandes´s letter how muchI could be improving. There is a lot I do and a lot that I don´t do.He wrote about cleaning this week and even though I try to sweep oncea day and do other things to clean up, the apartment is messy beyondmy control and I confess to have fallen into the trap of beingaccustomed to the messy or filthy state. Oh, the loss of perspective!One thing that I am trying to do and have started doing since lastThursday is to keep track of every 15 minutes of my time. Maybe, thatway my efficiency will improve and I can start making more progress. Iam at a stage on the mission, so I feel, where I am pretty muchestablished in my habits for the rest of the time, which may well bequite a sad thing. As I shared in the little letter that I wrote toMom, I feel like writing home is always a little bit of a low pointbecause I am more aware of my flaws as regards others, especially mydear ones, which would be you. I guess that is why we have family aswell, so as to help our little self-dependency bubble fade away andhelp us see things a little more as they really are.This weekend´s theme was actually that I felt a lot better about how Ihave been doing things, but I guess that I need to get started againon things.Can somebody look into the subject of a good Portuguese grammarlearning book for me? The book that the MTC provided has somewhat lostits point for me, even though I should be using it a lot more forpractice. The same thing is that I have basically stopped learning newvocabulary, which is a bad thing, but a problem that is propelled bythe fact that the modern Brazilian doesn´t use a whole lot of words,neither too much grammar. So Mom, if you could look into the subjector maybe have one of your sons look and then have you send the book,that would be greatly appreciated. Before you do anything though, Ithink I will go check today and see if they have anything here.Bookstores as a concept as well as locations are basicallynon-existent in the country, as far as I can tell.On the topic of goods: There are incredibly high tariffs on allforeign goods, which explains that even basic cars like a Corolla cost35,000 dollars here. Though you might be able to research a lot moreon the topic, it means that Brazilians spend on things which areexpensive and foreign, but also buy fake brands. All the cars, forexample, are foreign and I am not sure that there are any Braziliancar companies.I realized today that even though I know, I realize that I have nevertold any of you that I really don´t spend any time in the eveningreading letters or things from home. I am falling behind in my goalsof learning scriptures and things like that that I really don´t findthe time to do anything besides getting ready for bed in the evening.My analysis is helping me become a better teacher, I believe, but Ithink I am still falling short in a lot of areas.I am lacking in discernment for how to use my time well, as well aslack of understanding for how to study the scriptures effectively.I am praying a lot for all of you. I will now go and try to practicethe piano as I kind of messed up on the youth of Zion during sacramentmeeting yesterday.Love,-- Elder Frederick Luschin